Fundamentalism: It is religion or is it power?

February 19, 2003|By Barbara Brotman.

There hasn't been much attention paid in this country to the case of Touria Tiouli.

The 39-year-old French businesswoman has been detained without trial in the United Arab Emirates since October, when she told police there that she had been raped by three men who had offered her a ride home from a disco where she had been celebrating her birthday during a business trip. The men were friends of the disco's manager, whom Tiouli knew well.

An arrest was swiftly made--of Tiouli herself. The accused rapists claimed that Tiouli, a Morocco-born French citizen and mother of a 14-year-old boy, was a prostitute. Tiouli was charged with having adulterous sexual relations, a crime that carried a maximum 18-month jail sentence under the Muslim emirate's Sharia law--a lenient punishment considering that adultery is usually punishable in Islamic courts by death. She is out on bail but not permitted to leave the country.

A few American papers have picked up stories from English and French newspaper and news agencies, but the story has attracted little notice here.

It's hard to keep track of all the heads-men-win, tails-women-lose situations that have come out in recent years from countries following fundamentalist Muslim law.

Afghan widows forbidden by the Taliban to work, then hanged for turning in desperation to prostitution. A Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery while her male partner went free because only she had been implicated by pregnancy. The 15 Saudi Arabian schoolgirls who died in their burning school when religious police hindered attempts to unlock the door.

The mind reels. But just in time to keep the mind focused comes a new book called "Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror" (Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Book, $17.95).

It is a collection of essays examining the worldwide phenomenon of the rise of religious fundamentalism, and how it affects women.

Badly, the writers agree. And not just in the case of fundamentalist Islam. The Vatican, evangelical Christianity and Orthodox Judaism get their licks as well.

"In the wake of 9/11 and all the attention to the rise of Islamist fundamentalism, we felt it was important to show the more complicated picture of fundamentalism in the modern world, looking not just at Islam but Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism," said Betsy Reed, editor of "Nothing Sacred" and senior editor at the progressive The Nation.

"In all religions, female sexuality has been depicted as a potentially threatening, polluting force."

The pieces run through a depressing variety of forms of oppression visited on women on behalf of religion throughout history, from the chastity belts the European Crusaders forced on their wives to genital mutilation to a statement by Pat Robertson that "feminism makes women leave their husbands, kill their children, destroy capitalism, practice witchcraft, and become lesbians."

Opposing women's rights comes naturally to fundamentalism, Reed said. "In many countries, fundamentalist movements are also about opposing the gains of secular movements, which tend to be associated with movements for women's rights," she said.

The essays in "Nothing Sacred" delve into thorny territory. To what extent is fundamentalism about religion, and to what extent about power? Why does fundamentalism emphasize the more aggressive aspects of religions instead of tolerant ones? Does the Koran prescribe second-class citizenship for women, or has it been misinterpreted? If fundamentalism is anti-woman, why are women themselves sometimes drawn to it?

"The whole idea that there is a clash of civilizations between the East and West. ... this is an attempt to respond to that by showing the struggles within civilizations, within societies, between fundamentalist forces and forces for women's rights and secular freedom," Reed said.

Attitudes toward women aren't incidental to the spasms of religious extremism unhinging parts of the world; they are central.

It is modern life that is under attack; women are just the front-line troops.

It isn't enough to be shocked at the outrage of the month. We need to learn why they happen. A book is a good place to start studying.